This is War
by Kitte-Wolf
Summary: An explosion began it. It started with a bang. It will end with a bang. T for violence, possible character death, cursing, and other goodies.
1. Prologue

Prologue

It all started with a bang.

Danny could just watch it all go down.

His friends, family, all gone… because of a stupid test.

He looked at the ground, tears leaking out of squinted eyes.

The world just went numb. There was nothing left for him.

~Two weeks later~

He was out cold, strapped to an examination table, heart beating out a steady pace. The elder one stood over him, silver hair shining with a supernatural glow in the dim half-light.

The metal gloves covered the man's hands, and the sharp spear-like appendages slid out with a metal-on-metal sound. With utmost care, the elder sunk the sharp "claws" into the dark-haired by who lay unmoving on the cold metal table.

Removing the metal claws from the boy, a squirming ghost was pinned on the end of the talons. Opening his glowing green eyes, it was a stare-down between ghost and elder. With a growl, the ghost reacted violently, tearing the claws from him ad flinging both man and gloves away, leaving green gashes behind.

The man landed, dazed, and could only watch in horror as the ghost raised the gloves.

Grabbing the elder, the ghost ripped a form from the elder. Tossing the human away, another ghost was out cold. In a moment of rash thinking, the younger ghost dove at the dazed ghost, merging. In a cry of extreme pain, the elder human, having removed the younger human from the table, whipped his head around, provoked into action by the younger ghost.

The younger ghost was floating, venom green rings radiating out from his body.

Dropping down to the ground, the rings and horrible shrieking ceased. The phantom opened now blood-red eyes, pallid skin marred with dark rings under them.

Both humans back away, rear evident in their eyes. The ghost pounced forward, swatting away the older man. The younger one bit his lip, taking a battle stance against the ghost, knowing that there was no way he could win.

With a screech, the flaming-haired ghost dashed forward. The human was knocked aside, and the ghost cackled, leaving the mansion to blow up, leaving the two humans for dead.

It was then, all at once, when Daniel Fenton became the martyr and the victim. He served as a warning to the good and evil, soldier and civilian.

The war was begun.


	2. Enter Emily

Chapter One

**A/N: Some songs that really kind of set the mood are This is War(30 Seconds to Mars) Europa(Globus) and Gravity of Love(Enigma). If I find any more, I'll let you know.**

**Random fact: I'm a natural-born Oregonian. Who cares about harsh, dry winters? I don't, that's for sure.**

Danny groaned, shifting, ears ringing. His eyes opened to slits, then flew all the way open.

The house was a mess. It looked like something had exploded.

"Maybe because something did explode," he growled, shoving himself upright on arms that were covered in blood. He had been lying on his belly, and now he brought his legs forward so that he was sitting cross-legged. His clothes were in tatters, and various nicks and cuts littered his body. Danny groaned again, bringing his had up to his right eye. As he delicately touched it, he flinched away. The area around his eye hurt like hell.

A groaning sound alerted Danny to another living being nearby. He shifted, gingerly avoiding setting his left foot on the ground. The foot was covered in burns, and the 14-year-old avoided looking at it. Turning to look in the direction of the sound, he was startled to see his arch-nemesis so battered. The elder human had taken the brunt of the explosion.

Danny combed his mind, looking for the reason of the explosion. It clicked. Vlad had removed his ghost half, and his ghost half had removed Vlad's ghost half, merged with it, and become immeasurably evil. It clicked so perfectly well.

Shrugging, Danny painstakingly made his way over to Vlad, prodding the silver-haired person with a bloody finger. Vlad groaned again, and shifted.

Danny insistently poked the man, prodding harder.

Vlad groaned once more ad opened his eyes.

"Good," Danny rasped. "I thought you might have bit the dust."

"Would you have cared?" Vlad rasped back. Danny just shrugged.

"Thought so." Vlad closed his eyes.

"Oh no, old man. You may not be good company, but you're company." Danny chuckled, prodding Vlad again.

Vlad opened his eyes.

"What do you want?" he growled.

Danny looked away.

"Just need someone to talk to. I mean, you haven't been really good at that, ya know. And you're supposed to be doing that," he explained, looking at the ground.

"Oh," Vlad looked surprised. Danny hadn't ever been so open with him before. It startled the man, and there was a spark of hope that maybe, somewhere in there, Danny would begin to develop stronger, better feelings towards him; after all, their situations were the same. Ghost halves gone, lives in shambles. The similarities astounded Vlad.

"Yea," Danny nodded, still looking at the ground.

"I'll try harder, I guess." Vlad shrugged.

"Good," Danny rasped.

"So, uh… are you okay?" Vlad asked hesitantly.

"What does it look like?" Danny laughed bitterly.

"Oh…" Vlad trailed off. "So, how bad is it?"

Danny grasped his arm, no longer caring about the blood covering him. "The worst I've had," Danny stammered.

"Oh?" Vlad raised an eyebrow, hoping Danny would say more. Danny just nodded.

Removing his hand from his arm, Danny began to look over his body, taking stock of his injuries. His foot was still covered in burns, and his right leg had a nasty-looking gash that was bruising around it. There was a thin scratch on his gut, and his shoulder was awkwardly popped out of place. With a grunt, Danny shoved it back into place. It made a scrape-pop sound, and Vlad looked over, seeing the teenager effectively un-dislocate his shoulder.

Vlad raised a skeptical eyebrow as Danny continued figuring out where he was injured the worst. Why would Danny have to know how to that? What had happened to him to make him so good at taking care of his injuries?

Vlad stopped pondering that as Danny began to shove himself onto his feet. Balancing on one foot and leaning against what was left of the wall, Danny scooted over to where a broken counter stood. It was stable enough to be able to have someone sit on it, but still broken.

Hopping onto the counter, Danny looked around. He needed something to help the burns on his foot or else it would be bad…

His foot was red and puffy and throbbing in pain. Grabbing a towel, which Danny figured was better than nothing, he began to wind it around his burned foot, wincing at the pain but not letting it get to him. He knew from experience you had to ignore pain to successfully take care of wounds.

Looking through the cupboard again, Danny found a roll of paper towels. Shrugging, Danny knew that sometimes you have to make do with un-ideal situations and that you should be happy for what you get.

Tearing off a paper towel, Danny pressed it on the gash in his right leg. Letting the paper towel rest there, he grabbed the bottom of his shirt and tore off a strip of the cotton fabric, using it to tie the paper towel onto his leg. Next, he had to tie several strips of shirt together to keep the paper towels on the injury to his midsection, but that didn't bother him. Once the bigger injuries were taken care of, Danny bandaged the rest of his various nicks and scratches, avoiding his injured eyes.

Twisting, Danny hopped off of the counter, using it as a brace as he made his way over to the mirror. Looking in the scratched, reflective surface of it, he cringed as he saw his eye. It was a bloody mess, leaking tears. He wondered if it would still be functioning, then shooting up a prayer to whoever was up there, turned the handle to see if water would gush out of the facet.

"Hallelujah!" Danny yelled, punching the air, then grabbing a paper towel. Vlad looked at the teenager, confused. Danny was soaking some paper towels in the water that gushed from the faucet. Gingerly dabbing around his eye, Danny cringed as wet paper touched his tender, injured eye.

Grabbing fresh paper towels, Danny ripped off some more strips of shirt and tied them together. Placing the paper towels over his injured eye, he tied them onto his head using the strips of shirt.

Seeing that the tattered piece of cloth was worthless now, Danny pulled off what was left of his shirt, careful not to pull off any bandages.

Vlad watched this with growing curiosity. Barely trusting himself to speak, he asked.

"Why are you so good at taking care of your injuries?" Vlad asked, tilting his head.

Danny turned his head so that he could see Vlad.

"I had to get good at it," came the teen's simple reply, and he turned away again.

"Oh? Why is that?" Vlad pressed forward.

"None of your business," Danny's voice hinged on the line between civil speech and feral snarl.

Vlad shrank back. He knew he had crossed the line, he knew that anything involving the boy's family and past was off limits.

Danny turned ad began hopping over to the battered stairs. The sun filtered through the cloudy sky and shone into the ruined basement/lab. Danny forced himself up the stairs, occasionally placing weight on his burned foot and wincing when he did so.

"Do you need help?" Vlad asked.

"Not from you. In case you didn't notice, it appears as though your leg is broken," Danny shot back, continuing up the stairs.

Vlad looked at his legs. Danny was absolutely correct, and the shin of Vlad's right leg was swollen, nasty, and purple.

Vlad winced. He knew that was gonna hurt.

"You're just going to leave me here?" Vlad asked.

"Yup," Danny said, popping the p.

"Why?" Vlad asked, seemingly hurt.

"It's your fault we're in this mess," Danny growled.

"In case you didn't notice, Daniel, it was your own ghost si-" Vlad was cut off by and angry blue-eyed boy's snarl.

"I don't give two shits about you! Get that through your thick head!" Danny jumped up the rest of the stair, heavily limping away from the hole in the ground where Vlad was stuck in.

"Oh, real mature, Daniel. Really and truly. Cussing in a rage, huh? You're really sinking that low?"

Unbeknownst to Danny, his visible eye glowed toxic green for a moment before he limped onwards.

Vlad grumbled. He was still stuck down here, and with Danny being extremely pissed at him, Vlad doubted that he was going to be getting out of here. He closed his eyes and lay back, accepting his fate.

Danny limped onwards, into the woods that had surrounded Vlad's mansion. Gripping a tree, Danny risked a look back. His heart urged him to go back, to help Vlad, but Danny couldn't do that. He was too annoyed and angry at the guy for that.

Turning back towards the forest, Danny continued limping on, his teeth bared in a silent feral snarl of pain. His foot throbbed in beat with his heart, blood was already leaking through the makeshift bandage on his leg, and he wondered if he would ever see out of his right eye again.

Shirtless, injured, and weak, Danny struggled through the forest, ignoring the birds taking flight in fear and the squirrels racing away, scared by his fiery aura.

Leaning against a tree, he looked back.

"Damn it," he muttered under his breath. He had barely gone fifty feet from the edge of the forest. Summoned by the explosion, he saw the flashing lights of the fire engines and police.

_At least Vlad is okay, _Danny thought. _That's one thing off of my conscience._ With a grim smile, he turned back to the forest, slipping through the trees as he got used to the pain in his foot.

Jumping as he heard voices coming towards him, voices that he assumed belonged to police, he shoved off of the tree and started sprinting.

Picking up speed, as he went faster, Danny left the pain behind. Branches whipped his body and pine needles poked into his feet, but the freedom of running lifted his spirit up. As the events of the last few minutes left him, he raised his face to the sky, grabbing branches and jumping across streams. He thought he heard things hiss by him, but he didn't stop to look.

Pulling himself up into a tree, he looked down as the huffing police stopped under him, hunched over and puffing in exertion.

"Darnit, why'd the kid have to run?" one asked.

The other one shrugged. "He was just in an explosion," the other one mused.

"Exactly. With the amount of blood in there, not all of it could have come from Masters, otherwise he would be dead. Besides, Masters didn't have very many openly bleeding wounds," the first one surmised, then twitched as a drop of red liquid landed on his nose.

As if on cue, the two police looked up in the tree Danny was hiding in.

_Oh shit, I'm caught,_ Danny held his breath.

"Funny…" the first officer looked confused.

Danny looked down.

He couldn't see his feet.

_Holy hell… Am I… Do I still have some retention of my ghost powers?_ Danny's thoughts mused. _If I can still go invisible, what else can I do?_

"Billy? Joe?" another voice called.

"Over here, Mike!" Joe called. "We think we found the kid, we just can't see him."

"Why do you think you found him?" Mike called back.

"He dripped blood on Joe's nose," Billy yelled.

"I am so there!" a fourth voice called.

Two more officers appeared within Danny's line of vision, both in better shape than Billy and Joe. One was female, blonde, and probably had a family.

"Emily! Didn't know you were out here helping…" Billy looked like he was going to drool.

"I'm perfectly capable of helping," Emily hissed back. "And, who knows? Maybe if _I_ had been the one to approach him, if it had been _me_ to get to the kid first, maybe we would be able to be taken care of! That was a damn huge amount of blood in there, and very little of it looks like it came from Masters."

"Maybe the kid has a name," Mike mused.

"You're right. I think that I heard something about the Fenton boy being with Masters. This could be him," Emily summed up.

_Smart lady,_ Danny though. Another drop of blood landed on Joe's head.

"Definitely in this tree," Billy said.

Mike and Joe nodded. Emily just looked up Danny's tree.

"You three, get out of here. Maybe he'll come down and talk to me if you bumbling idiots aren't here," Emily ordered.

Mike shook his head.

"There ain't no way I'm letting you stay out here by yourself," the police officer growled.

"I can take care of myself. And besides, if the kid is up in the tree, then I won't _be _alone, now will I?" Emily glared at the males.

Emily had a fierce icy-blue glare that would have frozen Danny in his tracks had he been the recipient.

"Yes ma'am," Billy and Joe backed away before running off.

"No way," Mike shook his head. "What would I tell Tracy if you got hurt?"

"You'd tell him that it was my choice," Emily hissed.

"No way, I can't. Tracy's like a brother to me. It would break my heart to see his broken." Mike shook his head.

"Mike, just go!" Emily insisted.

Mike shook his head.

"Listen to me, Mike. This is our best chance at getting the kid safe, our best chance at being able to save a life. This is the kid's best chance for survival. Now just go. Please." Emily's eyes softened.

Mike sighed.

"You just had to appeal to my hero complex, didn't you? Okay, fine then." Mike turned and started walking away. Pausing, he turned his head to look at Emily. "Stay safe. I'm going to see you and Tracy married if it's the last thing I do."

Emily nodded, watching as Mike walked away. When Mike was sufficiently far enough away, Emily turned to look into the tree Danny was in.

"Kid, please. Come out. I'm not going to hurt you, you have my word," Emily said. "Here, I'll even get rid of these." She pulled out a pair of pistols, then tossed them away from them. They landed too far away for her to lunge and grab, then she pulled a knife out and tossed it so it landed next to the guns.

"See? I'm unarmed," Emily offered. "Kid, I'm not lying. With how you managed to sprint like that, even with the wounds you most likely sustained, you strike me as the kind of kid who would know if someone is lying." She paused. "If you are the Fenton kid, let me tell you something. Not everyone died in the explosion at the Nasty Burger. Jasmine, your sister. She was far enough away that she only sustained some burns. Major burns, but she's alive."

_Is she lying?_ Danny looked at her, then taking a chance, he turned visible and jumped out of the tree. Emily was startled by his sudden appearance and the cat-like grace with which he landed.

"You are the Fenton kid. Daniel, is that right?" Emily held out her hand.

"Danny," he rasped.

"Ah. I'm officer Emily Williams, soon to be Emily Jackson." Emily smiled. "Billy and Joe are harmless, more like puppies. Mike can be dangerous, but only to those who threaten the ones he loves."

Danny nodded, remaining in his crouched position.

"Listen, I can commend you on how you treated those injuries, but you really need to get them looked at by a professional. They could get infected, but you seem like the kid who would know that…" Emily trailed off. "Dear lord… Your scars… Who gave them to you?"

"N-not Mom and Dad, if that's what you're thinking." Danny's visible eye seemed to glow with indignation.

"Oh. Well, then!" Emily smiled sheepishly. "Would you mind telling me who, then?"

"Ghosts." Danny looked down.

"Oh, really? I've never seen them target you before," Emily had a question in her voice. Danny let it go unanswered.

"Would you be willing to come with me, then? You really could use some professional help with those injuries."

"Just to let you know so you can tell the doctors, my vital stats tend to be… weird. My body temp hovers around eighty degrees and my heart beats really slow," Danny explained, taking Emily's hand when she offered it to him.

"Oh," Emily was surprised. Danny's hand was _cold_. She let the teen lean on her shoulder as she helped him back towards the place of the explosion.

"And… can you make sure of something?" Danny was hesitant.

"Sure." Emily could tell that they would be having another missing person case if this wasn't done.

"Vlad doesn't get custody of me again."

Emily tensed. This kid was turning down being a millionaire!

"Why?" Emily asked.

"Past tensions…" Danny looked away.

"You didn't seem to mind after the… explosion," Emily pointed out.

"I wasn't in my right mind then," Danny replied.

"Understandable." _This kid has so many mysteries! Will I ever solve them? Each question answered is a dozen more asked,_ Emily mused.

Mike turned around as Emily walked out of the forest, Danny leaning on her shoulder.

Billy and Joe were standing next to their car, eating donuts, which they effectively spewed all over each other's faces as they watched Emily and Danny exit the forest.

Mike walked over to Emily and Danny, raising an eyebrow. Emily just shot him a look saying 'I told you so', and Mike just shrugged.

Billy and Joe rushed over at high speed, causing Danny to flinch a little. _So he doesn't like sudden movements or surprises,_ Emily thought, feeling Danny tense up through her shoulder.

"So you got the kid?" Billy was very curious, looking at Danny with a gleam in his eyes like he was looking at a gob of money.

"No, I don't 'got' the kid as you say, and the kid has a name." Emily's eyes were narrowed in Billy's direction.

Danny was kind of shrinking into Emily under Billy's scrutinizing, his discomfort obvious. _Crap don't go invisible!_

_So he also doesn't like being examined,_ Emily mused.

"And what is your name?" Mike had shoved Billy away, but kept his distance as he asked Danny this question directly.

"D-Danny," the teen replied uncomfortably.

"Ah, okay then." Mike turned to Emily. "We gotta get him to the hospital. He's lost a crap ton of blood, and it looks like he's been through hell and back."

Emily nodded, and she and Danny got a couple of steps before Mike stopped them.

"Nuh-uh, I don't think he should be walking on that foot of his," Mike raised an eyebrow at them.

"What? I'm fine!" Danny exclaimed, visible eye bright with carefully suppressed emotions: fear, pain, and did Emily see a tinge of regret and reluctance in there.

"No you're not," Mike shook his head. "Emily?"

Not letting Danny do anything, Mike and Emily picked Danny up, Mike holding his legs and Emily's hands hooked under his arms.

The two co-workers carried Danny over to a waiting ambulance, and entered it, setting him on the bed in there.

Emily stayed in with Danny, while Mike paused.

"You coming?" Mike asked Emily.

"Nope." Emily shook her head. "Can't just let him be mobbed by strangers. This guy is… He has a survivalist trust-no-one outlook on life."

"What would have done that?" Mike asked.

"He thought his entire family was dead for two weeks, Mike. That would get to someone, wouldn't it?" Emily's ice blue eyes looked into Mike's hazel.

"Okay, then. What'd you do to get him to trust you?" Mike asked.

Emily smiled impishly. "I left my guns and knife at the tree that Danny was hiding in…"

Mike rolled his eyes. "Really."

Emily nodded.

Mike left, letting the paramedics in. One closed the doors behind them, and turned to Danny.

"Hey, before you docs do anything, Danny told me that his body temp hangs around eighty degrees, and his heart-rate is very slow, slower than your average person. He wanted me to tell you before you freaked out," Emily told them.

One of the doctors scoffed. "He'd be dead if his body temp was eighty degrees."

"Holy shit! Frank, look at this!" One of the doctors held out the kind of thermometer you stick in someone's ear, and Frank and Emily read what it said on the screen.

"Eighty-one point three degrees? How is this kid alive?" Frank exclaimed. "He should be long dead!"

The doctor holding the ear thermometer shrugged. "He also should have passed out long before this, due to the amount of blood he's lost."

Frank looked confused. "This kid- I don't think he's natural."

Emily shrugged. "Also, be sure to let whatever powers that be know that he doesn't want to go back to Vlad Masters having custody over him."

"What? He doesn't want to be a millionaire?" Frank exclaimed. "Why?"

"Ask him," Emily advised.

Frank nodded. "Oh, I'll be asking him a lot of stuff."

The ambulance hurried to the hospital, and the doctors had Emily help them carry Danny over to a gurney. They wheeled it inside, and rushed him to a room where he could be examined by one more qualified than the paramedics and Emily.


End file.
